Lord Jim Chapter 7 Summary

At dinner with Marlow, Jim slowly starts to talk about everything that happened. Now we're talking.

He tells Marlow about his shame and how hard everything has been for him with the trial. And then he tells us what we've really been dying to know: what happened in the moments after the collision aboard the Patna. Go on, Jimmy, we're all ears.

After examining the ship, Jim, along with the rest of the crew, was totally convinced that the Patna was about to sink.

Seizing a storyteller's opportunity, Marlow breaks in to let us know that the crew of the Patna was found floating in a lifeboat the day after the collision, shipless, and passengerless, too.

The crew said the Patna had sunk. But the ship didn't sink after all. Nope, no matter what they say, this crew abandoned ship, and that is a Big Scandal. Huge.

We go back to Jim, who describes the horror he was feeling, thinking that the ship was about to sink. We get it, Jimmy. It was awful.

Standing there frozen, Jim is unable (and unwilling) to warn any of the passengers about the impending doom.